


Sharp as Fright

by mediapuppy



Series: The Sunset Job [2]
Category: Henry Stickmin Series (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Post-Triple Threat Ending | TT (Henry Stickmin), Protective Henry Stickmin, Selectively Mute Henry Stickmin, happy holidays ya'll have henry going apeshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28320528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediapuppy/pseuds/mediapuppy
Summary: Just once, when Charles had laid unconscious at their feet, Henry had launched himself at Charles' assailant like a man possessed.A routine mission goes south, and Ellie learns just how bad of an idea it is to hurt Charles while Henry is around.
Relationships: Charles Calvin & Ellie Rose & Henry Stickmin, Charles Calvin/Henry Stickmin
Series: The Sunset Job [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072745
Comments: 22
Kudos: 109





	Sharp as Fright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InediblePeriwinkle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InediblePeriwinkle/gifts).



> So literal months ago a certain somebody said they wouldn't mind seeing a minific based off this excerpt from [The Sunset Job:](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26689504) _"Just once, when Charles had laid unconscious at their feet, Henry had launched himself at Charles’ assailant like a man possessed"_ , and I, absolute buffoon that I am, neglected to work on it for months because college decided to steamroll my ass into nonexistence 
> 
> So Merry Christmas to a very special fam of mine, and Happy Holidays to everybody who happens to read this! This turned out so much longer than it was supposed to but I somehow managed to bust this out in a week to be able to post it on Christmas, so have this surprise not-so-mini fic in all of its awful barely-edited glory!
> 
> Warning for some brief descriptions of blood and violence!
> 
> Edit: Reuploaded because AO3 decided to post this as a backdated work!

  
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of Nowhere, America is a house that’s as pretty as pinkeye on a hot summer day. Not even the surrounding woods seem to want to touch it. The roof is sharp with old, chipped black tiles sticking up in random directions, and although only half of them remain the greywood walls they sit upon buckle dangerously outwards under the weight, looking almost as if they were pouting at the fact they were still upright at all. There’s no windows, only gaping holes where windows used to be that stare out at storm’s bruised and snarling sky - which is strange, because it had been a bright, blue afternoon when the helicopter had touched down not three minutes earlier. There’s no front door either, just a hole looking into impenetrable darkness. A gust of wind drags a few leaves up the crooked front steps and through the used-to-be-a-door hole, where they immediately kick over and drop dead to the floor.  
  
Henry takes one look at the place and turns on his heel and walks in the opposite direction.  
  
Ellie and Charles grab him at either elbow as they walk past and drag him along with them, practically having to carry him up the front steps that sink with their weight, and don’t pop back up even after they’ve gone.  
  
The entire place has a wet, heavy feeling to it, like mud that had up and decided to be a house one day and was failing miserably. Ellie swears she can feel her shoes sinking into the hardwood before they’ve even stepped foot off the patio, but the floor inside is surprisingly sturdy. Suspiciously sturdy. She’s barely got a foot in the door when Charles pipes up behind her.  
  
“Are we sure they were here within the last century?” Charles asks hopefully, lingering on the threshold between the patio and the mouth of a doorway leading inside. He’d been so brave up until this moment, had even seemed excited when Galeforce had given them the mission to check the place out, but he looks like he’s crumbling now. His smile is tight. Henry’s stood firmly at his arm looking about, trying to decide if he should be protecting them from the woods or the house.  
  
Ellie, who’s already a step into the house and regretting every second of it, turns back to them with a frown. “Galeforce said they cleared out earlier today, so, yeah. Come on, it’s not that bad, let's just get this over with.”  
  
It was, in fact, _t_ _hat_ bad, but misery loves company, and Ellie’s sure as shit not going into this place alone.  
  
The sky overhead grumbles unhappily, the sound of an upset stomach. Charles looks up at it, gulps, then looks back at her. “Maybe general got the place wrong,” he tries again, a bit more desperately.  
  
General Galeforce is a lot of things —grumpy, as stylish as an overfull coat rack, had once stared a very rowdy bull into submission— but incorrect is not one of them, and they all knew that. Everything he did was methodical and precise down to the very last detail. When Galeforce told them to do something they did it, and when he told them how to do it they at least kept that in mind as they did it a very different way.  
  
This mission was no different. Quick in and out he’d told them, while trying to ignore the way Henry was very obviously stealing one of his pens off the tabletop. Go check out an old house in the middle of nowhere that the Toppats had apparently been using to hold materials before they’d sensed the government on their tail and ran for the hills. They’d all be shoved off by the time you get there, so just go in and collect what scraps they’ve left behind and see what you can dig up.  
  
Ellie just wishes he’d mentioned the smell, for starters, or maybe the fact that the whole place was probably going to collapse on them from the second they stepped inside. But Galeforce had told them to do it, and the day Galeforce was wrong about something the entire world was liable to explode.  
  
Charles stares meaningfully into the darkness over her shoulder and says nothing for a good long while, hoping one of them will break the silence before he has to. After a ridiculously long minute of this Charles seems to remember who they’re talking about, and reluctantly shuffles on past her into the hallway muttering something about ghosts and pay raises. Henry, who very rarely ever leaves his side during missions, lingers at her shoulder waiting for something. Ellie gives him a strange look that’s met with unwavering defiance that she can’t quite understand at first, and then it clicks.  
  
She almost says, _I can handle myself_ , but then she remembers who she’s talking to and doesn’t bother. When he gets this way it was best to just do what he wants, and if he wants to be able to watch her and Charles in a very empty, very old house, then she isn't going to stop him. She takes off down the entryway after Charles, wishing Galeforce had given them some flashlights as she hip-checks an old desk while going round the corner.  
  
There’s a single bulb of hazy yellow light located bravely in the center of the hallway, hanging from the ceiling by a lone wire, and it seems to be the only source of light in the entire place save for the dreary grey coming in through the open window holes. The corners are unlit and dark. Behind her Henry picks up the pace until he’s at her shoulder, hurrying them along the hallway until the space opens up and they find themselves at the foot of a winding staircase going upstairs, which is just as appealing as the outside of the place. Nothing moves.

The cocoa on the side table by the stairway has nearly all solidified into one goopy, congealed brown mess at the bottom. There’s green fur growing on the inside of the mug.  
  
Or Ellie thinks it’s cocoa, or at least something that _used_ to be cocoa but is very much now just a quick way to punch your own ticket, and the rest of the house doesn’t seem to fare much better. There isn’t much in the way of furniture, and what does happen to exist is coated in a fine layer of fuzzy grey dust so thick and old it probably has its own ecosystem. She doesn’t even want to think about what’s living in that cup.

Which is why Ellie nearly smacks Charles when he goes to pick it up.  
  
“I wasn't going to drink it!” Charles squawks indignantly before she's even had a chance to accuse him of just that, pulling his hand away from the side table. He knows her too well at this point.  
  
Ellie stares at him and says nothing. Beside her Henry’s lips wobble a bit, but his body is stiff and rigid. He starts to pace about the space in the anxious sort of way he always does when he’s stressed and out of his element, trying to peer into the dark corners the lights don’t reach, his fingers on the pistol Galeforce had loaned to each of them for the mission. Ellie watches Charles’ eyes follow him, his mouth screwing up.  
  
His eyes drift from Henry back to her. “You really thought I was going to drink it? Ellie, I’m not- do you think I’m five or something?” Charles asks, sounding about as offended as Ellie’s ever heard him.  
  
Ellie hums, carefully not answering.  
  
Henry continues to pace. Ellie goes to turn to him, probably to tell him to sit down and stop worrying for five seconds, when there’s the sound of a certain man’s cloth going back towards a certain side table—  
  
“Don’t touch it either,” Ellie says without even looking at him, feeling a bit like a schoolteacher. For some reason, this finally gets Henry to stop pacing. His lips wobble again.  
  
“I wasn’t going to touch it,” Charles replies with the slightly guilty tone of a child caught in the act. He was definitely going to touch it.  
  
The silence creeps back in on them, certain and heavy. Outside the sky grumbles, and inside Henry’s feet scuff the floors as he shifts his weight around uneasily. Out of all the missions they’d ever done Ellie had come to realize very quickly that these were the sorts Henry hated the most - where there were too many unlit corners and too much space for him to watch all at once. It made him anxious. Poor thing’s probably a wreck inside right now. She tries to think of something to say to comfort him and comes up with nothing.  
  
“Why would it be so bad if I touched it?” Charles ventures to ask. He finally walks away from the dreaded cup to Henry’s side, who visibly softens a bit at having all three of them so close together.  
  
Ellie opens her mouth to respond, but Henry beats her to it. His voice is gruff and too certain for his own good. “Spores.”  
  
“Spores?” They both parrot back at him, equally confused.  
  
“Spores,” Henry repeats, a tad less confidently. He taps at his chest. “Airborne. Gets in your lungs, makes you sick.”  
  
Charles’ lips screw up with the effort of thought. “I think you’re thinking of that one Alien movie, Henry.”  
  
They both stare at each other very severely, and it’s Charles that cracks first. His lips wobble and it’s all over, and all at once Charles is laughing and leaning on Henry’s shoulder to hold himself up. Henry starts laughing too, and then they’re all laughing out loud in the dark. All of the tension melts away between the sounds of their voices. It takes forever for them to quiet down, shuddering sighs getting smaller and smaller like the tide being sucked out to sea.  
  
“Alright idiots, let’s just check this place out and get it over with. I have never wanted a hot shower more than I do right now.” Ellie finally manages to cough out, wiping at the tears in the corner of her eye.  
  
The place is bigger than any of them had hoped for. Ellie suggests they take upstairs first and work their way down, but then Charles is flailing away an ancient cobweb and suggests they each take a floor to get this over with as quickly as possible, which sounds like an awful idea that will get them all killed. But then Henry’s agreeing, because of course he does, and she’s outvoted.  
  
There’s an upstairs and a downstairs - three floors in all, including a basement. Opposite the brave little bulb in the hallway is the door to what used to be a kitchen, and was now just a room with kitchen-themed appliances that probably stopped working around the 1940s. And more mold, whose expiration date probably coincided with the day it would spawn sentient life. Thankfully Charles decides to take that room without having to be asked, just rolling his eyes and trudging in while Ellie rounds the banister leading upstairs, hoping whatever Blair Witch-esque demon she'd find waiting for her up there would kill her quickly.

At least her fate would be sealed quicker than Henry, who'd been forced to take the basement after she and Charles had taken one look at the creaky stairs descending into an endless void and fucked right off.  
  
Ellie goes stiff with one foot on the step. Something stops her, but she’s not quite sure what. There’s nothing around, and maybe that’s it. The steps lead up into sudden, total darkness broken only by dreary grey light slithering in through the window holes, and when she takes another step the wood beneath her shoes creak.  
  
She does not want to go up there.  
  
Ellie turns and squints at the kitchen door Charles had disappeared through a few seconds earlier, and in the hazy single-bulb light she can see him shuffling about.  
  
_Thank god he’s there_ , Ellie thinks, and it’s only in her relief does she realize it’s the silence that stopped her - not with fear, not yet, but good old-fashioned self preservation that seems to be lost on Charles and Henry half the time.  
  
"You weren't actually going to drink it, were you?" Ellie asks a little desperately, just for an excuse to hang about a little longer.

"God no!” Charles’ laugh rumbles in through the kitchen, and with it carries away the rest of her worries. He sounds as carefree as she wishes she felt. “But it made him laugh. He needed that, he always gets so tense during these. Now go check upstairs so we can leave!”  
  
Hopelessly fond, Ellie shakes her head and finally finds the nerve to climb the steps, feeling silly for having been nervous at all.  
  
There’s nothing in the first room, or the second, or the third. Little scraps of paper and footsteps carved into the dusty floors are the only signs she can find that anybody had been there to begin with, and even those are few and far between. There’s more gaping holes in the walls up here that at least make it so she can walk through the place without squinting, and the presence of more light finally puts her at ease.  
  
She should say something, just to fill the empty space and make this all go a bit faster. Ellie tries to think of something clever to get Charles to laugh again when there’s a thump from beneath her feet, from downstairs. Whatever had been rising in her throat dies there.  
  
Now fear comes, entering her softly but suddenly, sifting through the hollow places of her chest and filling them up with molten, sticky wax that makes her lungs feel tight. She slowly rounds back to the staircase and stands at the top of it, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. It takes her a few tries to get his name out.  
  
"Charles?"  
  
_It’s cold in here_ , she realizes. Her voice slides sturdy and strong down the cherry wood banister and down the steps, then falls into the silence like a rock being thrown into a deep, dark lake. She throws another.  
  
“Charles?” She tries again, losing a bit of the sturdiness she had the first go around. Slowly, she begins to climb down the steps. Her ears ring with the quiet of the place, not even her steps seem to make more than a muted thump quickly drowned out by the beating of her heart rushing into her ears. Her hand goes for the butt of her pistol, holding it out in front of her in a way she imagines looks at least a little professional.  
  
Ellie takes the steps down two at a time, and the temperature seems to plummet with every one. The cold is heavy and unnerving, and she has to practically wade through it to round the corner to the kitchen door.  
  
The first terror really begins to stir in her then when she gets to the door. Not because it’s cold and quiet, but because the door is closed. Not part-way closed, or slung lazily shut, but firmly closed. Charles _never_ shut doors while they were checking perimeters, he liked to be able to see and hear them at all times like Henry does, and she had been sure he had left it open when he walked into the kitchen in the first place.  
  
Terror stirs in her again, and Ellie knows the feeling now. This sudden chill. It’s like swimming in warm water, and suddenly you hit a cold pocket, and all of your skin clambers up your body trying to get away from it. It’s the same feeling now, but around her heart.  
  
Her fingers, settled firmly on the pistol’s trigger, feel clammy and shaky. She flips off the safety.  
  
Ellie thinks of knocking then thinks better of it. She grips the rusty doorknob, steels herself, and slowly pushes it open. It squeals on its hinges.  
  
“Charles? Hey, you okay in here?”  
  
No answer. Ellie walks in on legs that feel like stilts. There’s something halfway into the room that looks sort of like a crumpled remains of an old table, but Ellie’s mortally sure it’s not a table. Furniture in this place was hard to come by, and she was sure the room had been mostly bare when she’d walked past it before. So, what—  
  
It’s too dark to make out from the doorway. Her nerves are on tripwires. She creeps in, vaguely aware that somewhere in the back of her mind all the puzzle pieces are clicking into place with rapid precision, and as her eyes adjust to the darkness it slowly comes together so she can see the full picture.  
  
There’s an arm that she had stupidly mistaken for a table leg attached to a body that was not just a crumpled pile of old dinner cloths, wearing something dark green that’s awfully familiar. The table has a face, one with two closed eyes and lips slightly parted, a face that isn’t moving—  
  
It’s Charles.  
  
Her heart. Her heart isn’t in her chest anymore. It’s an alive thing clawing up her throat, making it hard to breathe. She stares at Charles on the floor, at his face turned towards her, quiet and still in the dim light coming in from the lone bulb in the hallway. There’s a red bump swelling on his forehead. The shadow of her legs stretch across his face, too long for her body.  
  
Ellie hurries to the middle of the room. Suddenly the air is too hot and close. Her breaths come in like hisses, and she’s not even aware of it. Oh god, oh god, _Charles_ . Somebody had been at him. Somebody had gotten the jump on him before he’d had time to react, leaving him a sad heap on the floor. She had spoken to him just a minute ago, he’d laughed, he’d been _fine,_ and, and—  
  
—and she has to get Henry. Damn the rest of it. She has to get Henry, and then they all have to get the fuck out of here. There’s no problems with her voice now, Ellie can feel the scream building up inside of her chest, it’s all going to come spilling out. She’s going to scream and then she’s going to hear Henry’s footsteps slamming up the steps, and he’s going to stand there wild and scared before they all jump into action. They’re going to get Charles out and looked at, he’s going to be fine. She just has to yell.  
  
That’s when something grabs her.  
  
A figure comes from behind the now open door like some demented jack-in-a-box, its long limbs nothing but flashes of nondescript blackness that Ellie catches in the corner of her eye before they’re upon her. They jab over her shoulder for the gun in one choppy, clumsy motion, but she’s unprepared for it, too busy trying to make out the small rise and fall of Charles’ chest in the dim light. Ellie tries to scramble away, yanking the pistol down. A heavy weight falls suddenly onto her back, forcing her to a knee, breath hot and wet against her neck that makes all the hair on her arms stand to attention. Her mind screams, _get away! Get away!_ _  
_  
The world seems to close in on her. It’s the size of a minivan, then a closet, pushing in on her shoulders. The air is filled with static, entering her lungs on every breath, filling her veins with sticky, hot adrenaline. Ellie gets her leg back up underneath her and launches herself forward on feet that feel a million miles away, putting just enough distance between her and the _thing_ to whip her body around in one quick, jolted motion, her arm raised in front of her, pistol pointed forward just like Charles had taught her, finger on the trigger—  
  
—a long, shrouded limb shoots through the darkness and forces her arm up at the elbow too rough, and pain blossoms in her shoulder. Her wrist strikes the wall with a hard knock, punching a pained groan out of her, punching her finger down—  
  
**KA-BLAM**  
  
The world stops, her breath dead tide frozen in her lungs. The shrieking, awful roar of the gun echoes in her ears in a dull ring that drowns out the whole world and makes her vision shake for a moment. But that’s not what makes her stiffen up.  
  
In the muzzle flash of the shot Ellie sees the figure for a brief moment, like the shuttershot of a camera being set off in a pitch black room. She sees a face. A man’s face. His eyes are wide, pupils blown out in the flash, his skin pale and sweaty as if with flu, a look of surprise frozen on his features as he reels back away from the sound so quickly it was as if he had gotten yanked back by an invisible hand.  
  
Then the darkness is upon her again, exaggerated by the muzzle flash disappearing into shrill, constant ringing. She can’t hear it but she can feel the heavy, startled gasps of her breath making her throat raw, forcing her eyes open so wide they almost feel like they’re bulging out of her. Ellie blinks rapidly to try and adjust back to the darkness, but the man’s features are engraved into the backs of her eyelids, and every time she blinks she can see him and his wide eyes, burned into the black.  
  
Beneath the shrill ringing in her ears there’s footsteps. They’re directionless, and that’s the worst of it all. They seem to come from nowhere and everywhere. She yanks her head up, her heart still hammering in her throat, there’s no time to stop it. It’s darker now, too dark to see properly. There’s a figure silhouetted by the dim light coming in through the open door. It’s tall, nearly blocking out the door completely. Ellie can barely make out the shape of long legs before they’re sprinting towards her.  
  
Ellie pulls back with no real thoughts at all. Sometimes, when the panic becomes too much, your brain’s only response is to shut down. Fatalistic apathy settles over her, makes her muscles strong. Her back hits the opposite wall. Ellie brings up the pistol again and aims into the darkness, but she’s too late. The man is upon her, smacking her wrist away.  
  
The pistol flies out of her hands. It skitters across the dirty and worn linoleum, butt and barrel swiftly changing places as it whirls uncontrollably away from them. They both stand there watching it, paralyzed in place, too scared to be the first one to go for it. For one startling moment Ellie’s sure it’s going to hit the magazine wrong and fire at them, and her stomach swoops. Instead the pistol hits the baseboard with a thin clang and disappears under the refrigerator.  
  
And that’s what seems to free them.

The man moves towards her again in great shambling strides but Ellie is faster this time, she’s ready for him. She gropes blindly on the kitchen’s old dusty marble top with jittery panic, her fingers finding something chalky and heavy. Ellie yanks the thing up and throws it at the approaching figure with all of the adrenaline strength she can muster. It strikes him on the face with a sudden, cracking force she can almost hear inside her own head, and explodes onto the floor in an almost musical jingle.  
  
At last the man turns away from her, his hands on his face, scurrying back into the darkness. She expects him to come for her again but he doesn’t, instead she can vaguely see his outline up against the wall. He’s scrubbing furiously at his face, a mess of long limbs and little groans. He tips back into the light for a moment, Ellie can see he’s shaking his head madly, then disappears from view all together into a corner.  
  
Fear sharp as anything in her chest, Ellie does the most sensible thing she can think of and goes as stiff as a board. Every sound is magnified. She can hear the light thumps of the man’s shoes on the kitchen floor, the drumsong of her own heart in her ears, a rat scurrying along the wall somewhere to her left, and if she concentrates very hard she can make out the very attractive sound of Charles snoring on the floor.  
  
Ellie hones in on Charles’ sounds, grasping the weight of them. Then the man makes a grunt and everything that makes up Ellie turns to him with a stuttered gasp that was probably meant to be a growl.  
  
The man pries himself from the wall on achingly slow steps, speaking with a voice the color of an old pair of dusty cowboy boots: “Ow! Why did - what the fuck did you just throw at me?”  
  
There’s the sound of a hand slapping a wall, and then the room is bathed in light. Ellie, who’s still pressed up against the opposite wall, has to shield her eyes with her hands to not be blinded. She squints and blinks, her eyes drawn to the floor where there’s a mess of ceramic shards in the lovely colors of shit brown and neon blue. She looks to the side and sees the ugliest ceramic owl cookie jar she’s ever seen in her life staring at her from the countertop - well would be staring, if it still had a head. So that’s what she must have thrown.  
  
The man groans again, and Ellie’s neck snaps back to him so quickly she can hear the tendons around her spine creaking.  
  
He doesn’t look anything like the large, hulking man Ellie had originally imagined when he’d so rudely grabbed her from around the back of the door. The man is tall, almost intimidatingly so, if it wasn't for the rolled-out, thin look about him with legs that seem too long for his skinny body. He almost looks like someone had taken a cartoon steamroller to a normal man then shoved the flat, wide-eyed remains under a dusty brown top hat and called it a day. The only thing slightly fitting about him is the all-black outfit that was probably meant to make him at least pretend to blend in, if it wasn't for the bright orange scruff below his bottom lip and strands of the same curling out from under his top hat.  
  
Okay, so maybe Galeforce had been a little wrong. But then again the man doesn’t look like any Toppat she'd ever seen, who usually fit somewhere in the spectrum of sleazy car salesman and actual Russian assassin. He looks much more like an anxious banker than a Toppat, but if she was to stand at a distance, squint, and ignore his nervous fidgeting, then he’d almost look the part. Almost.

Strangely enough, he looks like he'd be really good at pottery. After coming to this revelation, Ellie finds herself even more offended he'd gotten the jump on her, ignoring the fact he was probably a foot taller and at least half a pound heavier.  
  
The accent’s standard for a Toppat at least, which means it’s unplaceable. It seems to careen around Britain and the south like a game of pin-ball, but settles firmly on the latter side of the spectrum with the slight drawl the man uses to nervously speak to her with. “You could of just talked to me!”  
  
Ellie feels like she’s losing her mind. “I don’t-” she tries, stops, spluttering, not sure why she has to justify anything but feeling compelled to anyway, “-you knocked out my friend!”  
  
Said friend is still unconscious on the floor, snoring quietly, blissfully unaware. In true Charles fashion he’s fallen into the most unflattering position possible with his ass up in the air and one arm bent underneath his head.  
  
The ceramic owl head left a bloody scratch on the man’s right cheek and he knuckles it away with a wince, hissing sharp breath in through his teeth. “I was trying to find a lightswitch and that guy scared the shit out of me! How would you react if someone came in here flailing a gun around, huh?”  
  
Fair point. “Then why did you attack me?” Ellie counters defensively, her knuckled fists raised in front of her, refusing to let her guard down for even a moment.  
  
The man gestures expansively to the fridge, dramatically swishing his hands around on limp wrists. He kind of reminds Ellie of one of those inflatable arm men she sometimes sees in front of mattress stores going out of business. “Gun!”  
  
Alright, another fair point. If somebody had suddenly walked into her hiding place she probably would’ve done the exact same thing, albeit a lot more gracefully. Then again this guy seems like he’s 80% leg and about as graceful as a cat with its claw stuck in the carpet, so she can’t blame him too much for drunkenly stumbling about in the dark trying to disarm her. She just wished he’d had the good sense to not knock one of her best friends out. Ellie steps over Charles’ body and puts herself between him and the man, just for good measure.  
  
The silence that stretches between them is almost a physical thing. Her heart still races. The man wipes his knuckles off on his shirt and at last looks up at her.  
  
Although he has the sort of height that makes attendance on the basketball team mandatory he doesn’t seem to have much in the way of muscles, unlike Charles who at least fills out the fabric of his uniform in the way most soldiers do. He must have gotten Charles when he had his back turned, but the man hadn't come out unscathed for the effort. His bottom lip is fat and swollen from where Charles had probably punched him, thick like a slimy slug under the shoddy fluorescents. He licks at it absently as they stare at one another; sizing each other up.  
  
“I’m - uh - Howie,” the man says nervously, as if she cares at all what his name is. After a few seconds of tense silence he seems to sense this too. “I, um. Don’t know why I told you that.”  
  
“You’re a Toppat,” Ellie says, not knowing what else to say, then feels stupid for it. The anxiety of the fight is still simmering inside of her, making her movements a little too jerked and shaky, but her voice is miraculously steady and hard. “We thought you had all cleared out.”  
  
The man -Howie, apparently- has the decency to at least look a bit sheepish. “Well, we were ‘spose to, but I left my phone. Didn’t think you guys were gonna show up for a while yet.”  
  
The man’s mouth screws up strangely around the swell, his eyes squish in thought.  
  
“I think I’m gonna have to bring you in, or-or something. Chief’s gonna be so mad about this. So just stay still,” Howie says with all of the blasted enthusiasm of a man signing his own death sentence, which he may as well be, because the second the words have left his mouth Ellie immediately goes back into a half-crouch, her fists raised in front of her, her eyes as sharp as the ceramic shards coughed about the floor.  
  
The man stops as if she’d struck him, something sudden and knowing passing across his face - the knowledge that maybe she’d be a bit harder to take down than a pilot with his back turned.

"Now let's just," he pauses, one hand up in front of him, palm towards her. His breaths come in ragged, wet pants. "Let's just relax here, alright?"  
  
She does not relax. Ellie tenses, a wild animal in woman skin.  
  
“Please?” The man tries again, smiling at her nervously, a tooth hooked on the swollen meat of his bottom lip.  
  
She has to think fast. Her mind whirs to life, the panic subsiding enough to let in rational thought. She’s certainly faster but not fast enough to get past him. He’s got height and reach on her, which counts for a lot in a fight, even if she is more skilled. But you never underestimate an opponent, even one as nervous and self-conscious as Howie seems—  
  
An idea, short and sweet, places itself in her head. Ellie grabs and runs with it.  
  


"You don't look like a Toppat,” Ellie says suddenly, inwardly commending herself with how genuine she sounds.  
  


"Yeah, I know," Howie sighs with the resigned huff of a man who's heard this before. His hands flop down at his sides. "It's-"  
  
Quick as anything, Ellie lunges forward and punches him. She can feel his fat slug lip squishing under her knuckles, back against the hard irregularity of his teeth. His head knocks back and his body stumbles, shoes sliding against the damp linoleum with teakettle shrieks that remind Ellie of gym class after the rain. He groans in shock, trying to get away from her, but she doesn't let him get far. Ellie cocks her arm back to do it again, and—

The man catches her hand. It thwaps suddenly into his palm like a well-caught football, his rough, sweaty fingers gripping down around it so hard she can feel the rough cut of his nails dig into the back of her hand just below her knuckles. A panic shoots through her so sharp and sudden it makes her heart hurt, burning into a bright flare of agony when the man yanks her forward and kicks her smartly in the kidneys.  
  
Their eyes lock for a brief moment, and then he pushes her backwards as hard as he can.

Ellie pinwheels her arms madly to get her balance, and she would have succeeded, if her heel hadn't smacked back against Charles' unconscious body behind her. She falls down across his chest with a meaty thump. _Sorry, Charles_ , she thinks quickly, trying to awkwardly get her hands underneath herself.  
  
Her fingers slip. Her chin smacks against the floor, sending white nerve pain through her jaw. It takes Ellie a split second to deduce the only thing that matters: she’s not going to be able to get up in time.  
  
On pure instinct Ellie throws her arms up over her face, her body curling into Charles’ chest, every muscle in her body tense ready for another blow that never comes.  
  
After a beat Ellie peers through the gaps in her fingers.  
  
Howie stands there watching her, his eyes wide, his breaths shaky. He looks down at Charles' unconscious form on the ground, then back up to her face, looking just as surprised as Ellie felt. It’s obvious he hadn't meant to do that.  
  
“Oh god, I’m sorry,” Howie croaks, backing away a step, then another. He looks down at his own hands as if he’d never seen them before, flexing the fingers robotically, then stretches them out to her.  
  
And that’s the worst thing he could have done, because Ellie flinches away from his hand without even having to think about it. It only lasts a moment before she’s turned to face him again, hands down at her sides, face steeled hard to cover the embarrassment of flinching, but it was long enough. The shocked look on Howie’s face morphs into one of worry, then regret. It’s a look Ellie doesn’t care for one bit.  
  
He keeps saying something, his lips are moving and his hands are flapping about, but Ellie’s not listening anymore. His voice is drowned out by the sound of her heart thundering into her ears and staying there.  
  
There’s something behind Howie, something that slaps all of the thoughts back out of her head with the force of a roundhouse kick. What she sees there fills her with more terror than the thump of Charles’ body ever could have, more terror than this rickety old house had ever seen in its centuries of life. What she sees there burns itself into her brain in the same way the muzzle flash of Howie’s face had.  
  
But Howie’s only looking at Ellie, he doesn’t see the figure in the doorway, doesn’t turn towards it until he hears the too-fast bang of its feet sprinting towards him, and by then it was too late.

Henry’s upon him like a man possessed. His lips, usually so inexpressive, are pulled back to sharklike proportions; all pink gums and too much teeth, his nose above curled like the muzzle of a rabid dog. Ellie sees his face for only a brief moment but it's long enough to realize; she doesn't know this man.  
  
The man who had helped her break out of the wall without a second thought, who had smiled and introduced her to Charles, the man who once had held her hair back and shushed her whimpers when she'd drank so much after their first bad mission that she'd puked, and told her everything was going to be okay come shine or shower...that man bore only a vague resemblance to the man before her now, his features twisted in raw anger.  
  
All of these thoughts pass through her head in a single second, and the next she has no thoughts at all. This was the sort of terror that couldn't coexist with rationality or thought, only instinct. And Ellie's instinct was to block Charles' body with her own, and watch.  
  
For the first time, she wishes the lights were back off.  
  
The full force of Henry’s body hits Howie like a locomotive, knocking Howie flat to the ground like a doll and punching the wind out of his chest. His eyes bounce around crazily in his head, trying to figure out what’s going on, bewildered and sorry and a thousand other things that pass through his features before they settle frantically on panic. Ellie opens her mouth to scream, to stop them, she’s not sure, but the words all rush away from her.  
  
Henry makes a sound halfway between a shout and a growl, a sound she’s never heard him make before, erupting out of him like an abrupt mouthful of bile. Howie’s half scrambled to his feet when Henry slams him again. This time they both go down with a meaty thud hard enough to rattle some dust off the walls, Henry on top. Howie’s shoulder socks wrong against the floor and he belches out a muffled cry.  
  
There's a desperate scuffle for control. A mess of limbs and grunts and shoes scuffing the dusty, worn floors. Henry's fist collides with Howie's cheek and sends his top hat sailing across the floor like a puck on ice. Howie tries to return the favor and gets in a sloppy, chopped blow on Henry's chin. Henry's head briefly turns to the side, then snaps back with frightening intensity. Henry utters a single, wet shout of outrage and bores in on him again.  
  
Howie tries to scramble up again. His knees bend uselessly underneath Henry's body. The sounds coming out of his mouth are animal; the panicked whistle-grunts and gasps of prey trapped in a corner. Henry’s body jerks in animalistic movements to keep Howie down that seem to Ellie too strange to think of in association with a person. The cords in his neck all stand to attention - the tendon there making his skin bulge in a curved line that disappears into his chest, flexing and jerking with the rapid stuttering of his jaw as it works meaningless sounds out of his mouth. Henry grabs for Howie’s throat at the same time Howie elbows him away, and Henry ends up ripping Howie’s shirt down the shoulder.  
  
He never goes for his gun, doesn’t even seem to remember it’s there.  
  
Ellie wants to stop them, but she can't seem to remember how to pronounce Henry's name. The syllables get all jumbled up in her mouth, and all that comes out is a breathy "Hen-" that's quickly drowned out by the sound of Howie's quick shout of victory as he's at last able to get his knee up between them.

Howie knuckles Henry’s shirt, and smacks their heads together with a painful, hollow _thunk_ . They both reel back a few inches. Something unimportant crunches between them - Howie’s nose. A new stream of red runs down his thick lips, strands of it dripping down his chin, but he’s able to finally get some distance between them.  
  
Henry bites his own tongue. Hard. Ellie can see it. His lips quiver for a moment like he’s sucked on a particularly tart lemon, and the muscles in his cheeks ripple angrily. Eyes bulging, face livid, hair standing on end, he screams; the sounds that come from his throat are like the bells of hell, all of the hideous sounds of righteous anger that were usually reserved for animals and not people. His teeth are bathed in runny red, his tongue is the color of an overripe cherry, a noticeable dent in the tip of it from where his teeth had jammed down. He lurches to refill the space between them.  
  
Howie’s body strains and sunfishes, his arms flailing wildly, trying to crawl away, but Henry is faster. Howie’s forced down again, Henry straddling his chest this time. Howie’s hand desperately tries to push Henry off, and when that doesn’t work his fingers go shakily and uncertainly to Henry’s neck, as if he’s not quite sure what else to do. Howie’s face is the face of a very afraid man, with features exaggerated by sudden, stupid terror. If Ellie could think, she would think that her own face probably looked quite similar. His fingers work uselessly, thumbs pressing into Henry’s skin when he thinks of nothing better to do.  
  
There’s a brief moment of white-hot silence, and then Henry punches him. It isn’t the decisive way she had punched Howie, but something wild and uncontrolled that feels strangely horrifying for Ellie to witness. This time when a fist collides with the man’s mouth it makes a sound like a stubborn cork coming out of a bottle. His swollen lip finally bursts.  
  
Ellie flinches away from the sound.  
  
The man shrieks and yanks his hands away from Henry’s neck and claps it to his own mouth instead. Blood pours out from between his fingers and onto the backs of his hands in a steady stream. Ellie can’t see Henry’s face but she can see Howie’s. In the gap between Henry’s arm and his body she can see his eyes; hurt and shocked, the flesh beneath them a semi-circle of white.  
  
“You, you—” Howie seems to grapple with his words. His voice is wet and distressed. His face a mess of red. “You—”  
  
Henry cracks his shoulder back before Howie’s even finished his sentence, bringing it down with so much force Ellie can dimly hear the joints in his shoulder pop. His knuckles are a smear of red. Howie’s head hits the linoleum with a thunk, and his gasp of surprise is cut off so suddenly it was as if somebody had just put him on mute.  
  
For one brilliant moment the world is quiet and still, has sucked in a breath and held it there. Henry’s still straddling Howie’s chest, his breaths frenzied and rough. His arms hang uselessly at his sides, knuckles against the floor. His eyes jerk to the side.  
  
An arm shoots across the linoleum. It grabs a piece of ceramic shard with wild, sickening intensity.  
  
This finally gets Ellie moving. She moves without letting herself think. She has no coherent thoughts left anyway, not for the time being, and would not for some time. She is nothing but a thinly veiled bag of nerves.

She catches Henry’s arm at the elbow on the backswing before he can plunge it into Howie’s chest, and for one startling, horrifying second, Ellie is sure Henry was going to bring the shard down on her instead. His head turns, and turns, and turns—  
  
There’s blood on his chin, the corner of his lip is messy with flown strings of blood from his own tongue; watery and rundown with saliva. Blood splatters down onto the linoleum like sinister rain. His face is ashy pale, and all of the life in his body seems to have been sucked upwards into his eyes. They almost seem to blaze outwards, wide as moons and just as bright, his pupils pinpricks. Beneath her hand his entire body is shaking steadily and without letup, as if it’s filled with electricity.  
  
Ellie expects to find anger on Henry’s face, but instead all she can see is a species of miserable fright. There’s something lurking just beneath it too that Ellie can’t quite place. It's not devilment, because that's more or less there all the time, but a sort of frightful rabidness that's far worse. He stares at her, unblinking, panting hard.

Ellie draws a sharp breath. Vaguely, she's aware she's begun to shake too. Her voice seems to come from very far away. "Henry?"  
  
Henry goes to flinch away from the sound of his own name, but Ellie doesn’t let him. Her fingers curl against the inside of his elbow, keeping him there. His eyes are hunted, his lips peeled back in that awful, unconscious snarl that almost hurt for Ellie to look at for too long. So she doesn’t, instead focusing on the space between his eyes, as if that would keep her sane.  
  
Never in the months they’d known each other had Ellie ever been afraid of Henry, had never even considered the possibility. Charles and Henry are her teammates, and more than that (although she’d dare never admit it) they’re her family. She loves them as much as she can love anyone. But Henry before her, his peeled back lips and his mad eyes, makes her want to run far, far away from all of this and never look back. His face stirs the voiceless panic in her again, the terror she’d felt the first time she’d seen him silhouetted in the doorway.

The sight of Charles' unconscious body beside them is like novocaine, smothering her fright. Ellie picks up the pieces of herself and smashes them back together. Her features harden.  
  
“Henry, we need to get Charles looked at.” It sounds as if she’s never been so serious in her life, and Ellie’s distantly thankful that she’s able to conjure up so much strength when it feels like her knees are going to buckle and send her to the floor any second.  
  
It’s enough. Henry follows her eyes, and realization dawns on him so suddenly Ellie can see it in his eyes, in all of the tension leaving his muscles at once. Henry drops the shard onto the floor. It dances like a ballerina on a single, triangular leg. It trips and falls to the linoleum, uttering a single, sad musical note, then falls silent forever.

"Charles?" Henry breathes the name, does not speak it. His voice is trembling and papery, riding out on something that sounds suspiciously like a sob. He leaves Howie and crawls over to Charles’ side, his blood-smeared hand hovering over Charles’ chest.  
  
"Charles?" Henry breathes again, and then says nothing.  
  
His fingers go to Charles’ neck, and dimly Ellie can see they’re shaking. His index and middle finger stay there for a beat, then another, and then Henry’s entire body sags with relief.  
  
“He’s, he’s just unconscious, Henry. He’s okay,” Ellie explains, desperate just to hear the sound of her own voice. It grounds her; gets her moving again. Very slowly, as if she was walking towards a rabid dog and not her best friend, Ellie creeps over to Henry’s side and kneels down beside him.  
  
“He’s okay,” she says again, a little softer this time. Her hand, warm and sweaty, goes to the space between his shoulder blades and stays there. Miraculously, this finally gets Henry’s breathing to even out, if only for a moment. He’s hard and unyielding beneath her touch, but with the anger leaking out of him he almost seems to shrink back down to his usual size.  
  
Her throat works, but no sound comes out this time. She’s almost thankful for it. If it had worked they would’ve missed the sound of Howie’s shoes scuffing against the linoleum again, and wouldn’t have noticed he was gone until they turned around and saw a Howie-shaped hole in the dust.  
  
But it doesn’t work, and they do hear him. Ellie whips around just in time to see Howie try and run out of the door into the hallway, but it’s more of a sloping, drunken shamble. His hand is pressed fiercely to his face, and the sounds of his footsteps bang away from them.  
  
_Let him go_ , she thinks, _just go, leave us alone_. _Tell everyone else what happens when you mess with us_.  
  
Unfortunately, she’s the only one with this thought. Beside her Henry roars to his feet with renewed rage and belts after him. His hip slams against the half-open door in his hurry, and it hits the opposite wall with enough force for the doorknob to punch through the plaster. Ellie runs after him.  
  
Henry's faster, but Howie had a head start, and Ellie has a hard time keeping up with either of them as Henry tears through the hallway and bursts outside, practically flying across the front patio steps, quickly closing the gap between them. Ellie stops and screams his name from the doorway, but she knows it's useless. She jumps down after him.  
  
Howie’s halfway down the beaten dirt path when he jackknifes for the woods instead. His shoes beat the ground hard. He turns his chin towards the tops of the trees, and shouts to the heavens; “Jack, Jack now!”  
  
With an inarticulate sound of rage Henry lunges forward for the back of Howie’s jacket, and just then somebody shoots the puddle between them with incredible accuracy. The puddle kicks up a splash. Ellie digs her heels into the dirt and screeches to a halt. Henry jumps back, curling his fingers into his palm so hard his knuckles go white, shoulders shaking.  
  
Howie runs into the woods, his black outfit spotted with darker, wet spots from his gushing face. Ellie finds herself wishing he’d just run on forever and disappear before Henry works up the nerve to go after him.  
  
He does. Howie jumps down a slope and disappears. Ellie lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.  
  
At the edge of the woods Henry stands there with his back to her. His eyes search the space between the trees with mad intensity, his tongue still gushes blood into his mouth, and he swallows it absently. Ellie can’t bring up the nerve to go near him.  
  
He’s still doing it twenty minutes later when Ellie emerges from the house with Charles in a fireman’s carry over her shoulder, after she’d finally had the sense to grab her walkie-talkie and radio for backup.  
  
For the sixth time in twenty-four hours, Ellie feels her breath catch in her lungs. In the light of the approaching rescue helicopter, a simple black dot in the lead-grey sky, Henry’s shadow is a cheap imitation of him stretched on the ground, skinny and strange.  
  
His fingers twitch for his gun.  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Charles came to about thirty minutes into their three hour flight back home, and was immediately fussed over by two fairly young medics who looked frightfully out of their depths. They stared at Charles cautiously when he sat up and smiled crookedly at them, telling them he was fine, but they didn’t back off until they were sure he wasn’t bleeding into his own skull or was going to keel over and die on them.  
  
Despite being relatively okay he does come down with a pounding headache after a few minutes of being up and about, and he doesn’t settle down until Henry and Ellie are sat firmly beside him, assuring him that they’re alright, and that he has no damn right to ask that after what he’s been through. After looking them over and seeing for himself they’re not lying to make him feel better, he passes right back out.  
  
Presently Charles is asleep sitting up on the seat next to Henry, his neck pinched at an awkward angle, chin against his chest. Henry hasn’t left his side since, self-appointed protector of his asleep, bruised boyfriend. A job he takes very seriously. Too seriously.  
  
Then there's Ellie, who had readily accepted the offer from one of the medics to play a round of cards with them, “to calm her nerves” they’d said, eying her cautiously. After the adrenaline had been wrung out of her Ellie felt so calm she could’ve easily fallen asleep right next to Charles, but she took their offer anyway just for something to do. After a couple rounds of kicking their ass Ellie finally gets the nerve to do the thing she’d been avoiding doing ever since the helicopter had taken off.  
  
What do you even say to the person who had just scared the living shit out of you and now refuses to even look you in the eye? Whatever you say, it definitely isn’t what Ellie ends up saying.  
  
“I really thought you were gonna kill him,” Ellie says in lieu of a greeting as she collapses into the seat next to Henry, immediately regretting it before the words have even come out of her mouth. Tact has never been her strong suit, and now she has no idea what to say to Henry, how to regard him. Everything she’s doing feels like the wrong thing.  
  
Henry huffs out a laugh, but it sounds like anything but. It’s short and clipped, the sort that comes out of your nose and not your mouth.  
  
His tongue had begun to swell a few minutes after getting in the helicopter, and his speech is slightly slurred. It sounds painful. “I didn’t think,” Henry says after an infinite moment of silence. His hands are balled up between his legs, his knuckles caked with flaky patches of dark red. He wipes them off on the inner thigh of his uniform without breaking eye contact with the floor. “I just reacted.”  
  
“I don't think anybody thought during that. None of it would’ve happened if we had.” It’s a sorry attempt at a joke, and it doesn’t land.  
  
Henry curls away from her, so unlike the man that had almost gutted a Toppat with an old shard of ugly ceramic owl head. He doesn’t even look like the same person. He looks smaller now, his uniform baggy at the shoulders from where he’d stretched the fabric out during the scuffle, and there’s bags beneath his eyes.  
  
“I thought,” he stops, shaking his head as if to rattle the unspoken words out of his brain and back into the universe where he didn’t have to face them, “it looked _bad_ . He was over you. You were on the floor. Charles was-”  
  
“Okay,” Ellie cuts in as Henry’s voice picks up. They could go on about this until their heads and hearts ache and it won’t do them any good. She may have not known Henry well enough to know he was capable of anything like what he’d shown today, but she still knows him well enough to know he’s going to beat himself up more than anyone else ever could. The last thing he needed was to start letting the incident fester now. “We’re both okay, thanks to you.”  
  
"You're both okay," Henry says at length, as if he was trying to decide on the words as they were coming out of his mouth rather than before, like a normal person would do. He looks her up and down like he doesn’t quite believe her, then his eyes fall back to Charles sleeping propped up beside him and stays there. His breathing gets funny again.  
  
Ellie can see it happening in slow motion. Henry’s nose gets clogged up and his eyes get watery. He snorts back the tears and passes a hand over his face, but it’s no use. A little sound like a hiccup comes deep from inside of his lungs, and then he’s crying. Big, fat tears run hot down his cheeks, and his hands grope blindly for either side of him.  
  
Ellie closes the distance between them and takes his groping hand in hers, all fear of him gone in a single instant. She interlocks their fingers in a sweaty zig-zag. She does this as subconsciously as she had grabbed his elbow with, and as subconsciously as she would do it again and risk her life to keep them both safe.  
  
On Henry’s other side he finally finds Charles’ hand and takes it. Charles stirs a bit but doesn’t wake up, not fully, just enough to dimly realize something’s going on. He sits up and smushes his forehead into the crook of Henry’s neck, snoring.  
  
They stay like that the entire flight back to base, hand-in-hand, flying thousands of feet above the world that was quickly laying down with night. Somewhere in the woods the Toppats are looking over Howie just as the medics had looked over Charles, patching up his busted lip and broken nose, remarking on every single bruise and cut as he tells them about the army soldier that had suddenly gone mad.  
  
And if Ellie doesn’t quite look Henry in the eyes for the next two weeks, nobody mentions it.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Yes hello I crawled out of the pit of college hell to post this, and now I'm going to take a very well-deserved nap because I was working on this around the clock the past few days to get it out on time! It's choppy and not very well edited but I hope everybody enjoyed this little surprise holiday treat!
> 
> Have a wonderful holiday everyone, and stay safe out there! To fam: I hope this was able to at least give you a bit of a laugh and a smile!
> 
> As always, come yell about stick figures with me on [Tumblr!](https://mediapuppy.tumblr.com/)


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